The Old Fire
by Lee Savage
Summary: Post-finale. Once upon a tundra night, there was a boy who was playing and decided to stop his own heart. Amorralok. Cover art by kanako91.
1. Chapter One

As the Avatar, Korra's chambers in Republic City are like her office. There isn't much room for secrecy. Whether it's Tenzin or Bolin knocking, there is no time for relaxing.

Her private cabin is another matter. It sits atop the cold peaks like an obdurate warrior, old and rickety. Yet the fires she conjures inside are suitable enough to ward off the cold.

Naga likes it better there. Sure, there aren't the street stalls full of the plump peaches and mangoes she likes, but she has freedom. It reminds them of home.

It's safe.

(Though everything changed when the bloodbending brothers attacked, Korra now thinks, hopelessly amused.)

* * *

It hadn't been long after the revolt ended. Alongside Asami, she planned how to stop discrimination against nonbenders, worked with Iroh to rebuild the city. Always having the suspicion that she was too inept. Reluctantly, she never started a relationship with Mako; her duty will always come first.

She and Asami visited the hospital. In her blessed life, Korra removed herself from the pangs of outside problems. Here, they were real and crippling. The people she failed to protect while she chased boys and played probending. A five-year-old with his head bloodily wrapped in bandages, only seeing her out of one green eye.

And there she encountered two unconscious "friends" who almost perished in a "fishing accident." Even with the rise of new technology, there was only so much a healer could do. They couldn't restore limbs or sight, could only lessen the scarring of especially awful wounds. Barring expensive corrective surgeries, it was a hard deal. Nobody else was doused in cold fire when they saw the man with the skin peeling off of his back. They didn't know his face.

* * *

"They haven't been conscious for awhile," a nurse says worriedly.

Korra stays after Asami has to depart, pretending to have a figurative bleeding heart. Not that she lacks compassion after speaking to those with sad stories. A sad story here, a sad story there. Tragedies she couldn't prevent.

(Can she correct them?)

There's not much they can do, the doctors say. They'll bandage them up and let them leave when they are able. They don't know their identities, but nameless people stumble in every single day. Hungry, destitute, hoping for a hand that will lift them up like the loan that saved the shoe-shiner with a vision.

When the doctors go elsewhere, leaving this small room as the halls empty, Korra launches into action. She leans over Noatak's shoulder and shakes him, careful not to hit any healing injuries.

"You have two options," she whispers softly in his ear. "I'll tell them who you are—or you can come with me on Naga." Nobody will care when they disappear. As if anyone missed them the first time. To that, Noatak retorts with something uncharacteristically sarcastic about her poor choice of words.


	2. Chapter Two

The cabin smells of wet polar bear-dog fur.

She has them both where she can keep an eye on them. She doesn't have the heart to have them suffer horrible punishments, not when there's humanity in them somewhere.

Well, that's a lie: she doesn't want _Tarrlok _to suffer. Even with the extra bodies, the cabin grows colder. The frigid air irritates their scars. She can only alleviate their troubles to a point.

The right side of Tarrlok's visage is marred, heartbreaking when she considers how meticulous he was with his appearance. He smells like the wooden foundation of the cabin instead of spices and orchids. Even when the redness is lessened, it's such a cruel distortion of his once-proud features. But with the scars, the clothes too singed that they had to be removed and replaced with standard patient attire, he is unrecognizable. Korra buys simple garments for them, though she doesn't know their sizes and the stuff either rides up in places she'd rather not witness or the sleeves are too droopy.

She can't hate Tarrlok. He's a terrible person, but she can't. Maybe it's weakness, the same weakness that let them be born, let Yakone evade justice; maybe it's a new leaf—with all that talk about leaves and such. (Maybe she shouldn't have been thinking about probending when Tenzin brought that up.)

She can shove it in Amon's face now. Look, she's a fully realized Avatar, and he's at her mercy, so who's nothing now? Too bad their weakened states don't make it easy for Avatar works herself into a grim satisfaction when Noatak asks for his bending to be taken away. She wants to make him beg after all he's done, but all she sees is a pitiful man. Not the mastermind behind a great ruse, the monster who exploited the troubles of others with a tale based on lies and misplaced truths.

She's not him; she's not cruel. Korra tells him so, and they look at each other, his eyes shuttered with this invisible barrier. Korra agrees. He gets on his knees in silent compliance and doesn't protest as she advances and rests a hand on his forehead. Like he'd done to her. Except she faces him, doesn't commit the act like a coward. She doesn't say some dramatic thing with an ominous voice. Good thing too, since her deepened voice would probably sound stupid and she'd end up bursting into giggles as she debent him.

She thinks, _Does it really matter if I end up killing him?_

It startles Korra. She's never taken away someone's bending, but it's spiritual, not physical like Noatak's bloodbending. How did he get so proficient at debending people without any fatalities—or were there some? Did he ever think of that? Did he even care?

The bloodbending is what made him more than a nobody when he was young, but it also drew him closer to fulfilling his father's legacy. Is he nothing as he collapses under her touch, knocked out cold and helpless like so many before him? What is she doing?

Korra slings him over her shoulders without much trouble, climbing up the creaking stairs. She carries Noatak to the smaller bed that's not her own, the one where Tarrlok rests, hardly finding the will to move; her personal bed is quite expansive, large enough for three or four people. She indulges herself by snatching all of the covers on her bed for herself. It's nice and familiar to be so selfish. There are two beds and a worn couch in the cabin in terms of furniture that can be slept on, though the guest bed is upstairs, nowhere near her own room.

Korra is unreasonably delicate when she puts them beside each other. She pulls off his boots, almost falling on her butt when she applies a bit too much force. Why is she so mindful as she descends the stairs quietly?

Later, Korra doesn't know what his first words will be after being debent. A plea, a thank you, an apology?

When she checks on them later, Noatak's hunched over the edge of the bed, his feet on the ground. He asks her if his lieutenant survived, and Korra replies that she has no clue. Of course, Noatak already knows that much about her.


	3. Chapter Three

Tarrlok went blind in his suicide attempt, and the explosion also cost him his right arm up to the elbow. Korra used to button his shirts for him, combed out his hair and painfully attempted to style it. He never argued, never even made clear his discomfort when she tried something she was unfamiliar with. Despite loving her culture and doing her own hair in a Water Tribe fashion, Korra never integrated fully into where she belonged. She'd been very young when most of her hours were comprised of training. The things she shared with Katara often went beyond talk of warrior wolf-tails and the mundane things, yet it's always the littlest gestures that count.

He simply requested that she not do it into three ponytails. Tarrlok—requesting something from _her_.

Luckily, a sort of stubbornness fluttered around from her to him, and he now tells her that he'll no longer be such a burden. Given what he did last time to relieve the world of his presence, she's rightfully concerned. They are useless, Tarrlok reasons. Freeloaders. He and his brother destroy and never create. She's the one with power. With one word, Korra can ruin them, have them executed or languishing in prison cells almost too small to contain them.

Korra asks if he'd like her to pay for a surgery to repair his face, and Tarrlok breaks down into tears for the first time in twenty years. Then, the Avatar realizes that she's harboring fugitives, that she'd have to secret Tarrlok away like Yakone's assoiates.

He doesn't deserve it, Tarrlok says. He can't see what's wrong with him, but he can feel it underneath his remaining fingertips, and that's confirmation enough.

This is retribution. If only he could see, Tarrlok thinks, and then he'd have to see what his foolishness, his treading down his father's path, had wrought.

He doesn't even deserve death.

* * *

Her patience falters, and Korra has to go back to the city. She can't afford this vacation. Any distractions. All she's done is distract herself. No, she's the Avatar, and she can't just help only two people.

Sometimes she won't return to the cabin for days, weeks, and it clears her head. In a few weeks, she'll go to the Northern Water Tribe and enjoy a festival of the spirits ("spirits" in more than one usage of the word). Korra needs some gaiety after working on the repairs to the city, after the atmosphere of remorse and sadness perculating in the cabin. It's a new type of helplessness, the kind where she can't bring happiness or any resolutions, no matter what. Why should she care so much about men who've intimidated her?

She suffers from a bout of stomach flu, sweating and sick in her bed, her night-dress unbuttoned and flung open. Korra doesn't have to worry about modesty when she's alone. When she's at the place where she's supposed to feel peace, she always has to hide herself. Noatak-Amon (Noamon? Amonoatak?) and Tarrlok hadn't had to worry about maintaining private decorum before because they spent their adult lives al—augh! Why is she thinking of this when she's too busy carrying herself to the bathroom and attempting to rest before dawn?

Korra staggers to her feet. That's wrong, she guesses. They probably felt like they had too many secrets, that they were always being watched. She misses Naga, who's keeping guard at the cabin. The polar bear-dog often lumbers around in the cold. Korra thought Naga would growl at the newcomers, but she only whimpers mournfully.

The men do nothing but sit about. They haven't said ten words to each other since she "rescued" them. She hoped they could rekindle their lost relationship as brothers.

This responsibility thing is hard. Having to care for herself is even harder. Spoiled, perpetuating a system of the privileged lording over the oppressed, she's been a failure. Now she's a failure living with two old guys and a sore throat.

When she buys groceries for three, Korra has to say that she's a big eater (not a lie, really). However, the junk will probably ruin anyway. They eat so little.

There's talk of them moving to the city, and Noatak can find a job. It's an arrangement where she can check on them, yet it's riskier because she can be tracked with more ease by the press or less savory sources.

Any of the civilians who saw Noatak's face were at a good distance from him, several feet below. Noatak's face was not as badly damaged in the accident because the explosion had occured behind him.

His back is scored with reminders though. A reminder that he should be dead, that the spirits wanted to reclaim him. That his brother had been their willing mercenary. That he's past due like rotten meat. That Tarrlok is ready to die, and it's a darkness not even his older brother can protect him from anymore.

Korra tells herself that Noatak deserves worse, but all she sees in this hateful man is the shell of a boy who protected his baby brother as best as he could.


End file.
